Young Justice: Damnation
by Chaltab
Summary: Two years after the death of Wally West, the Team continues to work in the shadows to thwart The Light. But with Apokalips' forces stepping up their game plan and a new faction of supercriminals working to oppose The Light, the Team will have their work cut out for them now more than ever.
1. Tigress: Wounded

**Young Justice: Damnation**

 **Arc One – Tigress**

 **Chapter One – Wounded**

There was a dream that kept returning to Artemis for months after the end of the Reach invasion—after Wally West had donned the Kid Flash uniform for the last time and given his life to save the world. This dream saw Artemis running after him, bow and arrow in hand, clearing the way for Wally as he took on increasingly overwhelming odds. The longer the dream went, the more hopeless the fight seemed, until finally, Artemis missed, or ran out of arrows, or snapped her string. The reason was always different, but the result was the same—Wally disintegrated before her eyes. She was powerless to save him. A clinical psychologist had told her it was textbook survivor's guilt, that it wasn't her fault.

Of course that psychologist was Harleen Quinzel, an Arkham Asylum therapist who had fallen head-over-heels in love with the Joker of all villains and transformed herself into the Joker's partner in crime, Harley Quinn. The fact that the villain's advice had made so much sense to Artemis had made her—undercover at the time—question her own mental stability. But eventually Artemis subconscious realized what her conscious mind had already known: it wasn't her fault. There was nothing she could have done differently that would have made Wally any less heroic or brave. And that that was what she had loved about him more than anything else.

It was about then she'd started dating again. Another sexy red-head began popping up in her dreams, and for the first time in a while, those dreams were pleasant.

 _ **BZZT BZZT BZZT!**_

The alarm clock jolted Artemis out of a pleasant scene. She rolled over beneath the silk sheets of the swanky apartment she usually shared with Kate and smacked at the clock to get it to shut up. She hadn't gotten nearly enough sleep, and felt sticky from the night patrol's sweat. Unlike her namesake big cat, this Tigress preferred to get clean in a shower.

"Six A.M.?" she breathed. "You've gotta be shitting me."

Bright light from the open bathroom cascaded in, stinging Artemis' eyes a bit and illuminating a black cape and cowl and long red wig draped over a hat rack by the dresser. A set of reinforced body armor with a deep crimson Bat insignia on the chest lay crumpled in the floor beside it. The shower was already occupied, damn it.

"Kate? Are you up already?" Artemis sat up in bed. "I hope you didn't sleep in your armor."

"Sorry, Arte. Can't hear you," Kate called from the bathroom.

A few moments of impatient waiting later, Kate Kane stepped out of the shower. Artemis felt a tingle start in her fingers and creep up her arms. Kate—Batwoman—was so damn beautiful. Her new sexy red-head, though different from Wally in so many ways. Gender not the least of which; but more, where Wally was science-minded, skeptical, and hard to convince of anything, Kate was borderline superstitious, Jewish by faith, and open to new ideas when it came to crime fighting—among other things.

She wore her hair very short, always dressed in fashionable clothes, and had skin so preternaturally pale that Artemis wondered if Kate were a vampire when they first met out-of-costume. Her alabaster-white skin was only interrupted by tattoos; one on her arm, a Green Beret symbol, and a vivid red and black nautical star across her upper back.

Kate pulled on a pair of gray briefs, the band of which stopped well below her navel. "I was just surprised you were already awake," Artemis said.

Kate pulled on a light T-shirt that matched the briefs and began applying deodorant.

"Already awake?" Kate chuckled. "I haven't even been to bed. Who could sleep after a night like that one."

"Well I could, for one." Artemis rubbed the back of her neck. She didn't remember taking a blow there, but it ached like she'd hurt it somehow.

"Sorry, Arte. If you want to stay in bed a bit longer," she said, kneeling down so they could see eye to eye, "then I think we could find a way to work off some of my adrenaline."

Artemis smiled sadly. "Sorry, babe. I have to meet Kaldur for a mission."

"Oh well. It can't be helped." Kate leaned into a kiss.

Artemis closed her eyes and reciprocated. The tingling from before now affected every inch of her skin.

When they finally broke off, Artemis sighed.

"I'll make it up to you later, babe. I promise."

* * *

A quick shower later, Artemis stood in a crowded Gotham subway car, gripping the pole as the tin can clacked along the tracks. Seeing the Team again was always nice on some level, but she'd sensed a bit of tension lately. None of them knew—as far as Artemis knew anyway—that Kate Kane was Batwoman. To them, Artemis dating outside the team was a potential security risk. Her identity as Tigress could be compromised and thus put the rest of the Team at risk.

Never mind that every supervillain worth their salt already knew who Tigress was.

The funny thing was, it was the Team who had set her up with Kate, in a sense. Artemis had met her during a drug-ring bust that Nightwing and Troia had organized—though Kate's presence there was not something Dick had planned. Batwoman had been pursuing the ring as part of her own investigation, and was more than a little pissed that Nightwing's operation had derailed her own.

Despite sharing a name and insignia, Batwoman was not really affiliated with Batman, and Dick had confessed (or perhaps lied) that he didn't even know who she was. Artemis, for her part, took Nightwing's remark as a challenge to figure it out—partly because even with the cowl, she could tell Kate was hot.

Artemis smiled. She had realized she was bisexual as a teenager, but never really had a chance to explore that side of herself because she and Wally had caught fire so young and managed to stay together despite all the danger and destruction they faced together—or perhaps because of it. The fact that the rest of the Team didn't approve of her new love life wasn't going to stop her.

When her stop came up, Artemis hopped off the train with her duffle bag, and made her way out of the subway and to a back alley. The alley wasn't far from where she had once lived with her mother, back in the early days of the Team, and it hadn't changed much. The only difference was an old out of order Soder Cola machine rusting in a back corner.

Or that's what it _appeared_ to be. Artemis thumped a finger against the machine.

"Now what was the code again?" she muttered. "Oh right."

Artemis began tapping the drink buttons on the cola machine in a specific order, each of them not reacting, until finally the entire front of the machine popped off and slid to the side. Inside a concealed Zeta Tube rested. Artemis stepped into it and lightning sparked and flashed around her, the entire world warping until it was gone; a new scene began to resolve.

"Recognized: B-Zero-Seven, Tigress," chimed a familiar digitized voice.

Artemis stepped off the Zeta pad access ramp as her vision began to resolve.

"Hey guys I'm—"

In front of Artemis, eight other members of the team stood, staring at the Zeta tube. At the front was Beast Boy with his arms folded over his chest. Behind him stood Robin and Batgirl, with Spoiler by Barbara's side. Wonder Girl hovered over Robin resting an arm on his shoulder, while Bumblebee fluttered about beside them. At the back of the group, Conner and Megan stood, seeming more interested in their private telepathic conversation than Artemis' arrival.

Artemis had known them long enough to tell when they were doing that, even if she wasn't part of the link.

"…here," Artemis said flatly. "Why is everyone staring at the Zeta Tube?"

"You're late," said Beast Boy.

"And we were about to use it," Robin said, actually answering her question.

At the far end of the room, by the port hole that looked out onto what Artemis believed was the Great Barrier Reef, Aqualad stood, speaking into a communicator. Nightwing's sabbaticals from the team kept getting longer and longer. At this point Kaldur was more the leader than Dick was.

"I was patrolling until four in the morning," Artemis said. "Give me a break."

Beast Boy smirked. "No can do. In fact there was a bet on how late you'd be. Which reminds me."

Beast Boy extended a hand over to Batgirl. "Pay up, Babsy."

Batgirl smacked his hand aside, drawing a snicker from Spoiler.

"It's not a bet unless both parties agree to it," Batgirl said.

A rush of wind and a poke on her shoulder startled Artemis. She didn't even hveto see the red-and-yellow streak to know what was going on.

"Jesus, Bart!" she gasped.

"I bet she wasn't even on patrol. I bet she was just up all night with her wealthy new girlfriend. Did you pop the question yet? Don't let all that wealth slip out of your fingers, Artie!"

Bart was suddenly on the opposite side of her. "Kate Kane won't wait forever, especially since she's like twice your age."

Bart stumbled over Artemis' duffle bag.

"Crash!' he exclaimed. "Is this yours? It's at your feet of course it is. Let me take it to your room. Okay, done."

Bart had blasted into her room and back again before Artemis even knew he was gone, the bag vanishing from her sight in a red streak. Artemis sighed, waiting for Bart's customary flurry of pokes, and when it came on schedule, she flicked her hand out and caught Bart's wrist. Even with her superior strength, it was all she could do to thwart Bart's momentum, the friction making her hand uncomfortably hot.

"Ack!" Bart said. Finally still for a moment, Artemis grinned. It was amazing how Bart Allen, once Impulse, had grown into Wally's shoes as Kid Flash. It wasn't really a name that had suited Wally anymore anyway. "How do you do that?"

"Because your speed can't make up for the fact you're predictable," Artemis said. "It's a good thing you don't see the same supervillains every day or they'd figure out your patterns."

Artemis let his wrist go.

"And Kate is not twice my age. She's 28. I'm 22."

She cast a glance over at Conner and Megan. "We have other members of this team with a bigger age gap than that."

Conner looked at her crossly and red patches appeared on Megan's cheeks in imitation of human blushing.

Artemis made her way over to Aqualad as Beta Squad—Beast Boy, Bumblebee, Superboy, and Kid Flash—entered the Zeta Tube.

"So what's my mission, Kaldur?"

Aqualad sighed and gave an exasperated glare at the reflection in the submarine's window that Artemis sensed wasn't directed at her so much as things beyond either of their control. "Your briefing is a bit more sensitive. You'll be briefed in your room."

Artemis studied Aqualad's face. At 25 the Atlantean seemed to have hardly aged since she'd met him, but his face was so changed by the scar. An underling of Black Manta, stinging from the Aqualad's infiltration and blaming him for Black Manta falling out of favor with Savage and the Light, had sought revenge on Kaldur. She hadn't managed to kill him, but her blade had taken Kaldur's left eye. Now in its place rested a mystic replacement conjured by Tempest, a shimmering water-sphere that gave Kaldur his depth perception back.

"You're upset," said Artemis. "Is it because today marks two years since you 'killed' me?"

Aqualad's natural eye widened. "Actually I had forgotten that grim anniversary."

"Then what's wrong?" Artemis rested a hand on Kaldur's shoulder.

"Now isn't the time," he said. "I can't divide my focus when we have four squads on a simultaneous mission."

Artemis nodded and moved towards her room. Kaldur had changed too much. His face may have looked the same, eye notwithstanding, but seven years battling the Light came with plenty of other sorts of scars.

* * *

"She's not wrong, Kaldur." Miss Martian hovered near Aqualad. "I'm not prying into your thoughts, but it doesn't take a psychic to sense how on-edge you are. Is this about Nightwing?"

"It can wait," Kaldur said, pressing the button to reprogram the Zeta Tube coordinates to the orbital hangar where Megan's bioship rested. After the fall of Mount Justice, a single base always seemed too vulnerable. That was the reason their current headquarters was a repurposed sub from Black Manta's fleet: mobility.

"Just because it can wait doesn't mean it should. We don't have to hash it all out now, but just say what's on your mind." Megan landed beside him. "Confessing it is the first step to dealing with it."

Aqualad exhaled, finishing the coordinates for the bioship hangar and turning on the tube with the smash of his fist. He'd thumped the button harder than he'd meant to and hoped it didn't break.

"Artemis and Dick were the two closest people on this team to Wally," he said. "His girlfriend and his best friend. And they're the two that keep taking on these dangerous undercover missions, who keep risking their necks without the rest of the Team to back them up."

"I think that's just their way of coping," Megan said. "Wally's death hit us all hard, but they—"

"They're not coping, M'gann." Aqualad turned to her. "They're _avoiding_ us. They want to stay on the Team without really being part of the Team. If being around us is too painful for them…"

Miss Martian nodded. "We have to let them work through their grief at their own pace, Kal. You were so devastated when Tula died that many of your best friends believed that you'd honestly given up the fight and joined your father. Maybe it will just take Artemis and Dick longer to work through their pain than it took you."

"Perhaps," said Kaldur, frowning. "I just hope it doesn't get them killed in the process."

* * *

Artemis opened the bulkhead that lead to her room, lamenting how Spartan it was compared to the personal touch of her old room at Mount Justice, or the opulence of Kate Kane's penthouse. She had little time for this, however, when she noticed that next to the red duffle that Kid Flash had deposited, a figure clad in black sat on her bed, a blue chevron striped across his chest.

"Nightwing?" Artemis said, smiling and struggling to stay mad at him. "Oh my god. It's been forever, Dick. You dick."

"Just since September," he said. "Oolong Island."

"That was six months ago. You've been so busy with Bludhaven, college, whatever else it is you do." Artemis sat down. "And no wonder Aqualad was in a bad mood if you're briefing me."

"He did approve this mission," Nightwing said. He handed her a manila folder with 'For Artemis' scribbled across the front of it in his handwriting. "But it will take you off the table for a while once it gets properly started."

Artemis looked up at him. "How far off the table. You know I'm seeing someone right?"

Dick grimaced. "If I tell you, you'll want out before you even know what the mission is."

"Fuck you," Artemis said, only half playfully. She extended her hand. "Lemme see the folder."

Dick handed it to her and Artemis thumbed through the contents. Police documents revolving around missing persons cases made up the bulk of the folder. Human trafficking or serial murder suspected; both options made her skin crawl. It didn't help that sometimes she still felt as though Spoiler were judging her for helping the Reach kidnap her, even if it was for the purpose of rescuing all the missing teens.

"How on Earth did you get this stuff, Dick? You have some dirt on Batgirl's dad?"

"Of course not. Jim Gordon is a good cop." Dick stood up and pulled what Artemis took to be a wallet from one of his belt pouches. "And now so am I."

Nightwing flipped open the leather fold to reveal a badge and a Bludhaven police department identification card.

 _Officer Richard John Grayson_ , it read. _Metacrimes Division_

"You're a cop?" said Artemis. "No way."

"Way." Dick sat back down. "Of course giving you all this stuff _was_ technically illegal so keep it on the down low. I just got this job in December."

"Who would I tell anyway?" Artemis said absently. Then, something in the folder caught her eye: not another police report but a newspaper article by Lois Lane.

 _G. GORDON GODFATHER? The former political pundit's not-so-charitable philanthropy._

"G. Gordon Godfrey?" Artemis said. "What does that washed-up old bastard have to do with metacrime?"

Artemis remembered just two years ago when Godfrey was at the height of his popularity, disparaging Superman and the Martian race while talking up the 'peaceful' Reach invaders who were anything but. Even though Godfrey had turned on them when they revealed their fleet in their attack on War World, it didn't take long before the embarrassment over his earlier remarks on the Reach and an aggressive campaign against his advertisers led by Wayne Enterprises had put him out of a job on TV.

This article by Lois Lane was pursuing him even further: tracking donations to charities with poor reputations, his support for an ethically dubious pro-wrestling promotion, and even possible ties to metacriminal rehabilitation center that had eventually been revealed to be a scam founded by Hugo Strange prior to his coup at Belle Reve.

"If he had ties to super-crime," Nightwing observed, "then it would make his hostility the Justice League a lot more understandable. And mean he was working in the Light's favor, if not actually for them."

"And you think he has something to do with all these missing person cases?" Artemis thumbed through them again. There wasn't much in common between them; race, sex, and religion varied all over the place. The connecting tissue was minimal. They were all fairly young, between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five, and they all lived in the general vicinity of a major east coast city: Gotham, Metropolis, New York, Boston.

"The common thread is something not noted in the police files," Nightwing said. He pulled a slip from the back of the folder out and held it up to Artemis' face. "All of the disappearances occurred shortly before or after an event."

The sheet displayed a shirtless strong man in a fanciful mask, cotton candy blue and pink. A logo with gold and silver text read: **GLORIOUS GODZ Professional Wrestling. Presenting our East Coast Extravaganza 2018.  
**

Dates and cities followed, promises of a spectacle and wonder.

"Pro-wrestling?" Artemis laughed. "Really?"

"How much do you know about it?"

"Well I know it's fake, for one," Artemis said. "It has a reputation for shadiness, like pumping wrestlers full of steroids and not taking enough safety precautions. Never heard about it being linked with super-crime though."

"Fake is an interesting word," Dick said. "It's _fixed_ of course. It's like a big soap opera about combat sports, but it's performed live. No wires, no stunt doubles. But I think you'd get a chilly response if you used the word 'fake' within earshot of someone who just took a bad tumble off the top rope."

"Okay," Artemis said. "I can respect that. I know what it's like to take a blow. I guess I'm surprised you know much about it. It always seemed like a lot of macho bullshit to me."

"It can be," said Dick. "As for knowing about it, pro wrestling got started in traveling carnivals and circuses. There's sort of a shared DNA there. Mr. Haly had a lot of stories about when his father ran the circus."

"So if you know that much about it, then why aren't you the one doing this?" Artemis handed the folder back to him. She thought of Kate and the cost of an undercover mission on their relationship. It would be difficult, especially depending on how deep the cover would have to be and how long it would take.

"I have a job now. I'm investigating other leads, not to mention extra-curriculars. Plus, you're _good_ at it." Nightwing stood up. "If you want to take some time to talk it over with Kate, or anyone else, then that's okay. But I need an answer soon."

"Tell my girlfriend that I'm doing secret undercover superhero work?" Artemis scowled.

"Ah, see that's what I mean. You almost fooled me with that," Nightwing smiled. "But I kind of figured out that Kate Kane was Batwoman when you started dating her. Red-heads in spandex is kind of your weakness."

Artemis thought about muttering that it wasn't spandex, but given that Dick had seen Batwoman take several mobster's bullets to the chest without flinching, she figured he knew that.

* * *

Belle Reve looked even gloomier than usual as the cold March rain poured down around the prison. M'gann began to wonder if criminals really were a superstitious and cowardly lot; the storm itself, its turns and crescendos, its thunderclaps, sent psychic pangs of jitteriness and paranoia through the compound. M'gann was in the unfortunate position of having to intercept them. There had been a threat delivered to the prison that morning regarding the cell of an inmate there: Arthur Brown, also known as the Cluemaster.

He happened to be Spoiler's father. That's why Spoiler was on Alpha Squad today, along with Miss Martian, Robin, and Batgirl. Spoiler's costume covered her head-to-toe, a black helmet and faceplate hiding her blond hair and blue eyes, and a bulky violet shaded cloak (Spoiler called it 'eggplant') hid her frame. There was little chance, rationally speaking, that Cluemaster would recognize his daughter in her superhero costume, yet Stephanie Brown's mind was still fluttering with a buzzing anxiety. This would be the first time she was anywhere near her father since his arrest.

But Spoiler needed to be there because short of a forcible mind-probe—not somewhere M'gann wanted to go if she could help it—Stephanie was the best qualified to gauge her father, tell when he was lying, when he was playing word games, and when he was dropping clues. Like a third-rate knockoff of the Riddler, Arthur Brown felt compelled to leave clues to his crimes, though rarely with the wit or dramatic flair of Edward Nigma. It wasn't a coincidence that Brown's crimes had never gotten him enough credibility to work with the Light.

Which is what made the nature of the threat so perplexing: a bomb threat sent simultaneously via snail-mail and email, naming nobody as a target, just Brown's cell number. And included to back it up, a sliver of weapons-grade Kryptonite. No small timer or prankster would have access to munitions like that.

Alpha Squad approached the questioning room, the two guards outside awaited alongside Amanda Waller, temporarily reinstated as the warden after Hugo Strange was revealed to be a conspirator. Though she was now national security director for President Suarez, Waller kept a close eye on the prison and the new Warden, Cameron Chase.

"Secretary Waller," M'gann said diplomatically. "I didn't expect to see you here today."

"This facility holds some of the most dangerous criminals in the United States," said Waller. In the years since the breakout attempt thwarted by M'gann and Conner, her thick Louisana accent had faded to the edge of perceptibility. "The President insisted that I oversee every step of dealing with this threat."

"Has Cluemaster said anything?" asked Robin. "Does he know who sent the threat?"

"Inmate Brown," Waller corrected. "He claims to have no idea. Suggested the sender wrote the wrong cell number down. Then he thought a moment and blamed his wife."

A grunt that M'gann wasn't sure signaled amusement, outrage, or some mixture of the two escaped from behind Spoiler's faceplate.

 _Stephanie, he's just taunting them_ , said M'gann to her through the Link.

 _I know,_ Spoiler responded. _Still, where does he get off to blame my mom for it? Bastard._

"We'd like to speak with him," M'gann said. "But I don't want him to know there's a telepath present or he may be more guarded with his thoughts. Would it be… acceptable for me to assume another form?"

"If you're worried about his civil rights," said Waller, "then I'll have you know his rights end where the integrity of this facility begins. I'll not have a repeat of seven years ago."

 _Man, I don't like this lady,_ Stephanie said. _Even if my dad's an asshole._

 _Tell me about it,_ echoed Batgirl. _Batman isn't too fond of her either_

M'gann took it that Waller was done talking and began shifting her density and appearance until she resembled a prison guard—Caucasian and nondescript, someone Brown would likely pay no notice. When they had the go-ahead, M'gann allowed Robin and Batgirl to take the point, while she assumed the guard's typical position in the corner. Spoiler waited outside the room, listening in on the conversation telepathically.

"So could Batman not take time off his busy schedule to come interrogate me himself?" Cluemaster laughed. "Sending his lackeys out for the legwork. Well I'll tell you the same thing I told Chase and Waller and every other god-forsaken stiff in this prison: I've got no idea who sent the threat, and don't know anybody but my idiot-and-soon-to-be-ex-wife who'd even want to do me in."

 _Fuck you, dad._ Stephanie thought.

"I don't think Crystal Brown has access to Kryptonite," said Batgirl. She leaned forward placing her gloved hands down on the table. Arthur Brown was not a particularly handsome man, and his eyes betrayed a sort of cruelty and desperation, but his jaw and face were set in a way that it gave him a bit of roguish charm. He was easy with a smile and a joke, which may have explained how a nurse like Crystal Brown had fallen in with a sleazy crook like Arthur.

Cluemaster shrugged. "You'd be surprised what you can find on Cragislist these days."

"Robin," said Batgirl. "Are you sure this is the Cluemaster? Because he's sure as hell acting like the Joker."

"The Joker is occasionally funny," said Robin.

Cluemaster at back in his chair, the chain of his shackles clanking as it fell from the table.

"So we can both agree this farce isn't funny," Cluemsaster said. "Think, Boy Wonder. Why would I be in on a plan to blow up my own cell? You think I want to be pasted or irradiated? Maybe talk to that Hungarian jerk in the cell next to me. You think a former Count don't have the clout to arrange a bomb?"

"Hungarian?" Robin said. "Wait, does he mean—"

"Count Vertigo," Batgirl confirmed. "He's been held here since his diplomatic immunity was revoked because Vlatava refused to extradite him."

"I swear you made that country up," Cluemaster said.

M'gann reached out with her empathic senses, finding the mental pattern of Vertigo elsewhere in the building. She found him in his cell… asleep. She didn't buy it. After years of failed appeals, Vertigo's lawyer had successfully argued insanity. He would soon be transferred to an asylum for the criminally insane in Opal City, where he'd have a much better chance of escaping than Belle Reve.

 _I don't think he's lying about this,_ Spoiler said. _He couldn't maintain a poker face like this to save his life. He's only this cool when he's telling the truth._

M'gann skimmed his surface thoughts, but realized he was only having fantasies of leaping across the table and attacking Batgirl and Robin. She retreated a moment. Filling one's mind with images the psychic would find unpleasant was a technique some people used to resist psychic interrogation, but Arthur was not supposed to know that M'gann was in the room. The attack wasn't particularly gruesome, not enough to disturb her really. Probably it was just Cluemaster trying to work out his anger. Probably.

 _What if we have this wrong?_ Batgirl thought after a moment. _This may not be about killing anyone or assisting an escape. What if this is a distraction?_

 _But what for?_ Robin said.

 _Smuggle something into the prison?_ Spoiler offered. _The prison is on orange alert._ _What changes when that happens?_

"Oh no," said Batgirl, out loud, with sudden realization. Before she gave away the psychic link, she grabbed Robin's arm. "What if getting Brown out of his cell was the plan all along?"

"Of course," Tim said. Then, he added mentally. _Actually I'm not following._

Batgirl stood and glanced to Megan and then to the real guard on the other end of the room. "We're done here."

The three filed out and made their way into the observation room, where Waller and Chase awaited them. Whereas Waller was aptly nicknamed The Wall, a huge imposing middle-aged woman, Cameron Chase was her opposite in every way. A slight and disarmingly pretty blonde, Chase somehow managed to be nearly as imposing as Waller in spite of the huge difference in stature.

Chase stood as the four entered the room. Waller gave M'gann a nod and the Martian shifted back into her default Miss Martian form. Chase grimaced upon seeing M'gann shapeshift.

"I didn't know you'd invited an alien in here, Waller," said Chase.

Waller smirked. "This alien helped prevent the attempted breakout seven years ago, Warden Chase. If not for her there might not be a Belle Reve anymore."

Chase sighed. "Noted. Now what was this revelation you had in the interrogation room, Batgirl?"

M'gann stepped forward. "It was Spoiler's idea, actually, Warden Chase. Batgirl was covering for us to not expose our telepathic conversation to the Cluemaster."

"Spoiler suggested that this might simply be an excuse to get something in to prison," Batgirl interjected, "And then I remembered something from a case file. Six months ago we were investigating the disappearance of a metahuman, Todd Rice."

"I'm familiar with the Oolong Island incident," Chase said. "Some of the supercriminals involved in that disaster have cells waiting for them here once the extradition is complete. Todd Rice, also known as Obsidian was once a member of Infinity Inc—until he allegedly went insane and attempted to kill his father, Alan Scott."

"That name sounds familiar," said Spoiler.

"The original Green Lantern," Robin said. "His power ring was damaged when he found it and affected his physiology. And consequently, his kids inherited some strange quirks."

"What does any of this have to do with the bomb threat or Cluemaster?" Chase said. "Todd Rice was killed on Oolong Island was he not?

"Traces of Rice's DNA was found in one of the destroyed labs," Batgirl said, "his body was never recovered. Warden Chase, remind me what standard procedure in the event of a bomb threat is?"

"A sweep with bomb sniffing dogs. Spectroanalyis looking for radiation or chemical traces…" Chase blinked. "Which requires minimal electromagnetic interference including the damned lights. Son of a bitch."

Waller stood up. "Obsidian could be in any dark corner of this prison. Assuming you're right, how would we even search for someone like that?"

"I could scan telepathically," Miss Martian said. "But Obsidian's abilities would make it easy to hide from that. The only way to be sure would be to have a Green Lantern scan the facility."

Waller swore and turned to Chase. "Warden, I would suggest you contact the Justice League immediately."

* * *

"So how long would you be gone?"

Artemis eyes went from blurry, hazily looking toward a bright speck on the ceiling, to focusing on Kate's chin and lips as she talked. Artemis' head rested on Kate's lap, a porcelain-colored trio of fingers combing through Artemis' hair.

"What?" said Artemis. "I was thinking."

"How long would this one be, Arte?" Kate's other hand moved to lift Artemis' off the bed, squeeze it tightly as if clinging to a damsel just tossed from a bridge, as if she were afraid to let go. "I don't want to be clingy. I know the mission comes first—"

"Kate—"

But she ignored the interruption.

"I just mean we've got a good thing going here, and going into deep cover means you won't even be able to contact me. Unless you're infiltrating the dumbest bunch of criminals on the planet."

"You think you'll lose me because that's how Renee and you grew apart?" Artemis only knew what Kate had told her of the former GCPD detective Renee Montoya, but it was partly the periods of separation required by Renee's job that had done their romance in.

"I guess. I just don't want to repeat that part of my life. Or the drunken stupor that came after it."

Artemis rolled her eyes, flipped over, and kissed her way up from Kate's exposed belly, just above the single button in the middle of her vest, then to her chin, then her lips, staying locked in the kiss until Kate reciprocated.

"Katherine Rebecca Kane," she said in a low voice. "You're not going to lose me just because I go undercover for a bit. I won't even be in deep cover for a week or so yet, and Nightwing said the actual incommunicado part won't take long."

"He actually said that?" Kate said. "Or was he just being optimistic?"

"'She won't even miss you, Tigress'. That's what he said."

"I can already tell he's lying," Kate said leaning back and pulling Artemis down with her until the archer pinned the heiress to be bed, the space between their bodies heating up. "Or he doesn't know me very well."

* * *

Artemis had trained in a lot of things over the years: archery, hand-to-hand combat, espionage and stealth. She'd studied acting under Batman's butler and Atlantean language at university. Training in professional wrestling though, that was something she never imagined she'd have to do. She took enough bumps—not to mention cuts, abrasions, bone breaks, and the odd bullet wound—from real supervillains to ever really consider letting some oiled-up Hulk Hogan or Total Diva throw her around. But this was where Nightwing's investigation was taking him, so this was where she was going.

The drive from Gotham City to Hoboken was surprisingly traffic-free, possibly because nobody in their right mind would want to travel to either city if they could avoid it. Tucked away in a cul-de-sac a few roads off Main Street, an unassuming brownstone building bore a sign with a stylized WWA logo, below it reading Williams Wrestling Academy.

She saw Dick's motorcycle parked out front and pulled her own car up beside it, carrying her things including the falsified identification that Nightwing had provided her. Artemis Crock who? She was Tegan Lee, twenty-four, from Napa, California, raised by a single mother (half true), father dead (she wished), no siblings. Moved to Bludhaven a few years ago for University and was now on the police force.

Artemis had taken a lot of care to memorize the details of her cover identity, so it would be a shame to accidentally show the damn wrestling school her real driver's license. She moved through the door, the old building hitting her with a musty smell tinged with gym sweat. The large room off to the side housed two wrestling rings but no people, while an office at the far end was open, Nightwing sitting in plainclothes talking to someone Artemis couldn't see.

As she moved to the office, she passed by a rather large poster on the wall from an old wrestling event.

"BATMAN vs THE NATURE BOY" the poster read.

Batman? It certainly wasn't the Justice League's dour grimacer, crusading caped guy, mentor of Nightwing. The man in the picture was dressed in a huge furry bat-costume, complete with a horrific headpiece that could not have been easy to see out of. Though the poster was in black and white, it also appeared that the man in the costume was African American.

"Lee!" came the voice of Nightwing. "Stay whelmed and get in here."

Artemis broke her gaze off from the poster and moved into the office.

"I'm here, Grayson," she said as she crossed the threshold. "What's the deal with that poster out there with the big goofy Batman costume?"

"That would be me."

The voice came from the man at the desk: a huge, muscular black guy who even in a buttoned-up dress shirt seemed more than capable of pile-driving a guy into the canvas. He was a bit aged now, but the grin on his face was familiar. The man in the poster.

"Oh! I'm sorry," said Artemis. "You are?"

"Geezus, how well did Officer Grayson explain things to you?" the man said. "I'm Wayne Williams, the owner of this fine school. I'm going to be your trainer on this pro-wrestling crash course."

"Like I mentioned before," said Nightwing. "Officer Lee has the physical conditioning down already, and she's a hell of a fighter. I'm sure she could kick your ass, in fact."

"Are you now?" Williams laughed. "Well I've had my ass kicked enough by smaller guys than me to know it's not worth testing that theory. But if she doesn't even know about the Great Batman then I'm not sure I can have her ready for this little undercover operation you have for her such a short time."

"I'm a quick study," Artemis said. "But really, Batman?"

"It was, oh, fifteen years ago now, I guess." Williams leaned back. "I was just some two-bit jobber working his way up the ranks, and then Gotham City started this talk about a giant Bat-Man that swooped down and took out the crooks. I was looking for a gimmick, so that's the gimmick I took. I didn't know the urban legend from Gotham would go onto be a member of the Justice League."

"Wow. And how did you meet Dick?" Artemis bit her lip. "Officer Grayson."

"Relax, Tegan," Nightwing said. "We only just met really. But I remembered seeing him on TV as a kid, and well, his dad's picture is on the wall back at the precinct. I put two and two together."

Artemis nodded, wishing so hard that Megan were there to set up a telepathic link so they could talk about these things. She took his meaning though: Williams' father was a cop, a Bludhaven cop, killed in the line of duty.

That must be why Dick trusted him to help him out and why Williams had agreed to it.

"Oh my god," she said. " _That_ Williams."

Wayne nodded grimly. "That Williams."

"Anyway," Wayne said. "I look forward to seeing what you can do in the ring. I'll just need you to fill out the releases, emergency contacts, etc. Class starts this afternoon at three."

* * *

After filling out the papers, Artemis grabbed her bag and started to head back out to her car. It was almost noon. She had time to grab some lunch and kill a few hours till she needed to be back at the studio, though she had no idea how to navigate Hoboken and would probably waste at least one of them getting lost. She stuffed her things into a locker, snapped it shut, and headed outside.

Before she reached her car, Nightwing flagged her down from beside his motorcycle and called her over.

"Tegan, there's been a bit of a development."

"What's up?" she eyed him suspiciously.

Nightwing pulled his phone from his pocket and held it up to her face, leaning over to her so that their heads cast a combined shadow on the screen and made the display more visible. The picture on the screen was a zoomed in shot of a wrestling match. The shot showed two wrestlers, one of them putting the other in a submission hold.

"Notice anything?"

"That's poor form for a choke hold," Artemis said.

"Not the wrestlers, the guy next to them, with his arms folded."

Artemis scanned the man's face. _Oh._ His hair was darker than usual but it was definitely him.

"Edward Nigma. Riddler." Artemis frowned. "He's encountered the Team before. He's worked with the Light."

"And he has an eidetic memory," Nightwing said. "He'll remember your face. And you know after you infiltrated Black Manta's cartel they'll be on the lookout for you."

"So I wear a glamour again?" Artemis said, already thinking of several reasons why that wouldn't work for this job.

"Ra's saw through it then," said Dick, naming one of them. "And he'll have told the Light what to look for. I knew all this going in, so I've got a contingency for it. I just didn't want to go that far. It's… drastic."

"How drastic?" Artemis said.

"Let's just say it's more complicated than a charmed necklace. I'll tell you more when there's a safe place to do the ritual."

Artemis blinked. "Ritual? I'm really not going to like this."

* * *

Outside Belle Reve, the rain had stopped and the afternoon languished on, though storm clouds on the southwest horizon made it seem much later, blocking light from the gulf coast sun. M'gann silently beseeched H'ronmeer, God of The Sky, for clear skies until they departed: Aqualad said the Light always monitored the prison, even when they didn't have an inside man, because so many of their agents were locked away. It would be easier to target and track her if rain was beating down on the hull.

"Green Lantern has been searching for more than an hour," Batgirl said. "If he were going to find something, you think he'd have found it by now."

"I'm in telepathic contact with him," M'gann said. "Or at least with his ring."

"Digital telepathy," observed Batgirl. "Neat."

"And?" said Robin. "What did he find?"

M'gann sighed. "He's searched the prison twice and found nothing. He's been arguing with Waller that there's nothing more he can do. But she wants him to triple check."

"Wait," said Spoiler. "If he hasn't found anything then why are still here? Nobody's trying to blow my dad up after all."

"Waiting for his all-clear," M'gann said, not quite able to hide her own exasperation.

"I've been analyzing the message," Barbara said. "In addition to the physical package with the Kryptonite, which is post-marked Knoxville, it was also sent via email. Nothing on the account to identify the sender. It was created an accessed from a series of public IP addresses at internet cafés in Dallas, Hub City, and Paris. All the metadata has been scrubbed from the file."

"So a world traveler who isn't completely computer illiterate," Robin said.

"That narrows it down to, what, a billion people," said Spoiler. "And definitely rules out my dad, because he'd intentionally leave a clue. All this is getting us nowhere. I'd feel better if I had a problem that was punchable."

"Well it might have gotten us somewhere if any of the computers he used had webcams, but our guy was either lucky, or smart enough to think of that."

"What about CCTV?" Robin said.

"Operative words: _closed circuit_. I'd have to actually go to each café to view their security feeds in the long shot that I could identify the perp off one of them." Batgirl took a deep breath.

"I know that," said Robin. "But it's a start. We run it by Aqualad and he can send us to the four cities. Speaking of, how's your French, Stephanie?"

" _Muy malo_ ," Spoiler replied.

"You get Dallas, then," Robin said.

* * *

Wayne Williams paced back and forth across the wrestling ring, soft boots on the canvas. Artemis was faring better than most of the other students after the drills, practicing the rolls, the bumps, the cardio. Superhero fitness was no joke, especially for those without powers like herself and Nightwing. She had worked up a fair sweat, but several of the other students were drenched.

"You've worked hard today," Williams said. "But the day is far from over. There's more to wrestling than the physical part."

He tapped his head with his index finger. "There's the stuff up here. There's the mentality."

He spun around; one of the other students took it as cue to lean on the ropes while Wayne had his back turned, but if he meant to do it stealthily he failed.

"Tell me," said Wayne. "Who is your favorite wrestler? The one you cheer for when his or her theme music begins. Who always gets you pumped? Who inspired you to join this school?"

He spun around and pointed at someone by the door of the classroom, holding a bottle of water.

"You, Derek." Williams paused. "And don't you dare say it's me, because I'll know that's bullshit."

Derek twisted the cap back on his water bottle. "Ric Flair, sir. WOO!"

"Sarah?" said Wayne.

"A.J. Lee."

Wayne nodded, then moved to the guy next to Artemis. "Carlos?"

"Trish Stratus!" he called out.

Wayne moved his gaze to Artemis. "How about you, Tegan?"

"Big fan of the Nature Boy," Artemis said, improvising. She had no idea who that was, but—

"Another one," Wayne said with an even tone, and quickly moved on.

What did he mean by that?

He went on down the line, asking the other four students. When one shouted 'SU-PER DRA-GON!' in the meter of a chant, it looked as though Wayne would leap across the ring and fling the boy face-first into the mat, but the instructor settled for a stomp on the ground.

"This isn't a joke, son," Wayne barked.

"Okay, in all seriousness, it's Sumie Sakai," he said.

Wayne backed off. "Better. Now notice the names I _didn't_ hear: Cena, Lesnar, Big Show."

He paused, and then practically sneered.

"Roman Reigns. What all the wrestlers you told me have in common is that they're not just good athletes; they're consummate performers. They get in the ring and they don't just sell their bumps. They sell themselves. You buy _them_ as a person, as a warrior, as a character. And that's one of the big things we'll be working on over the next few classes: getting down the basics of your character, your in-ring persona. Something bigger than your stage name or whether you're a face or a heel, something that will shine through whatever lame-ass gimmick that creative wants to saddle you with."

"What if we already have ideas?" asked the A.J. Lee fan, Sarah.

"Then I'll help you refine and implement them," Wayne said. "The big thing you need to be figuring out how you are unique. How the person that you are will shine through in the ring. So who are you?"

* * *

Artemis looked at the address on her card. A safe house here in Hoboken that Dick had procured with Batman's bottomless pocketbook, and where Dick was supposed to meet her tonight. She flung her red duffle bag over her left shoulder—the right one still ached from when she and Carlos had botched a reversal they were practicing—and slammed the door to her truck perhaps more forcefully than necessary.

It had taken a lot of willpower to fight her instincts and not waylay the poor guy, but blowing her cover wasn't worth it. In actual combat she could out-fight any of the people at the wrestling school, including Wayne, easily, but when it came to pro-wrestling she was greener than the rest.

Up three short flights of stairs that were nevertheless torturous in her condition, she found the door and knocked. A moment later Nightwing let her in. The place was plainly furnished with new but not-especially-high-end stuff. Grayson was not in uniform—cop or superhero—and said little to her as he had his phone pressed to his ear. She sat down at the kitchen table adjacent to him, dropping her bag on the floor.

A raspy voice on the other end of the line continued to talk, with Nightwing intermittently interrupting with a yes or no response. Finally, he ended the call.

"So that was about our solution to your Riddler problem."

"Can it wait? I'm exhausted. And Wayne gave me homework." Artemis unzipped her duffle and pulled out a small stack of DVDs and began studying the covers. "Wait so Ric Flair and the Nature Boy are the same person?"

"It can wait, yeah," Nightwing said. "In fact it will have to. I'm not sure how this spell interacts with aliases like Tegan Lee."

"That voice definitely wasn't Zatanna. Who exactly are you getting to cast this spell on me?" Artemis tapped her fingers against the kitchen table to the beat of Doctor Who's opening theme, a habit she had picked up from Squire during a mission in England that seemed to annoy her mentor The Knight to no end.

"You wouldn't know her," Dick said. "Someone I met via Troia, but she's trustworthy."

"Methinks the Nightwing doth protest too much," said Artemis.

"Or I just know what you're thinking," Nightwing said. "It's hard to trust anyone and we get caught up and second guessing everything. Even when we exposed The Light's alliance with The Reach, they turned it around on us and stole the War World."

"You think that was Savage's plan all along?" said Artemis.

"Maybe not." Nightwing sat up. "But you have to wonder."

"The man's fifty thousand years old," Artemis said. "He could rightly call Ra's al Ghul a child. The fact that we've been able to stay within a couple steps of his plans means he's not nearly as infallible as he'd like us to believe."

Nightwing nodded. "True. It's hard to stay whelmed when there's so much on your shoulders. You know I used to think I wanted to be Batman when I grew up. Now I can't fathom why anybody would."

"I always figured it was revenge for his parents," Artemis said. "And don't give me that look. Everyone on the Team figured out who Batman was when Jason died. But then, when we lost Wally, I realized it's really not about revenge, as much as I hate the Light for bringing the Reach to Earth in the first place. It's about doing everything in your power to stop it from happening to someone else."

"Getting a bit existential here aren't we, Officer Lee?"

"Maybe, but you started it." Artemis punched Nightwing's arm. "Now get out of here. I need to shower and then sleep for a day. I haven't had a good night's sleep since I don't know when."

"You realize there are showers at Wayne's gym, right?" Dick said, opening the front door.

"Four girls in line ahead of me, and I sure as hell wasn't going to double up. I got scars that would raise questions."

Nightwing smirked. "We all do."

And he was gone, leaving Artemis with her DVDs and her thoughts.

* * *

Arthur Brown lay back on his prison cot thinking—hoping—that he'd be able to get to sleep before King Shark started snoring. How a guy with lungs _and_ gills could have so much trouble breathing, he had no idea. That Green Lantern jerk had kept Arthur in the interrogation room so long that he had gotten used to the relative peace and quiet. Of course in Belle Reve the quiet was always over fairly quickly. Not long after he'd got back to his cell Count Vertigo had started retching into his toilet and been taken to the infirmary. It was hard enough to—

"Good evening, Mr. Brown."

The voice was low and heavy and seemed to be coming from right behind him—even though his head and back were flat against the cot.

Arthur jerked up, so quickly he almost fell out of bed, and tried to speak. But as he did so he felt something clamp down on his jaw, keeping it shut. A stab of white-hot terror ran through him. The threat _was_ against him after all. Even Batman hadn't terrified him so much. As much as he craned his head, he couldn't see anyone; yet he was distinctly being held down.

"I hope you didn't mind the theatrics earlier, but I had to get the lights down low so I could sneak in here. You can talk, by the way. Just think it. I'll hear you."

So the rumors were true—the guard-informant had said something about a psychic shadow-man being the possible infiltrator.

Arthur struggled not to blast mental obscenities at the assailant. "Who are you? Are you that-that Obsidian guy Green Lantern was here for? You want to murder me like you tried to murder your old man?"

"Oh, I'm not Todd Rice, though I do owe my talents to him." A pause. "You can call me Shadow Thief. And relax: I'm not here to kill you."

"Then what are you here for?" Arthur grimaced. "And how did you hide from Green Lantern?"

"He didn't think to look _inside_ one of the inmates," Shadow Thief said. "Now you'd better appreciate the fact I just spent two hours in Count Vertigo's stomach to get you this message. You've been chosen by the Calculator as our strategist."

"Calculator?" Arthur blanched. "That's an actual guy's codename?"

"What, not quite as clever as Cluemaster, the guy who leaves clues to his crimes?" An eerie laugh echoed through every part of Arthur's skull, so loud it was like his head was being used as a subwoofer. "Personally I don't get what the man sees in you. I guess he's settling since the Light got Nigma."

"The Light?" Arthur said. "Vandal Savage's Injustice League?"

"Yes," said Shadow Thief. "And Calculator wants to take them on! I thought he was insane too at first, but… well, spoilers."

"Don't say that word around me," Arthur said. If he ever found out who that purple-caped little bitch was, he swore he'd send her parents an explosive Christmas present.

"I'm enjoying some irony right now like you don't even know," Shadow Thief said. "But I digress. We need to talk about getting you out of here."

"To see this Calculator?" Arthur said.

"To join us in The Dark," said the voice. "And snuff out The Light."

* * *

Author's Note: So yes on the off chance that you've seen my deviantart account then you know that I started a fancomic along these lines a while back. But, well, I'm not much of an artist. I still wanted to tell this story so I decided to convert it to prose, something I actually went to school for.


	2. Tigress: Ritual

**Chapter Two – Ritual**

 **New York**

 **March 20, 14:11 EDT**

A diner in New York City seemed like a strange place to meet give the sensitive nature of their conversation, but as soon as Dick Grayson saw the building, he understood why Donna had chosen that place. A huge pentagonal shield obviously reminiscent of the symbol of the House of El, red and yellow inverted, displayed a K. Below it, boxy letters spelled out KRYPTON CAFÉ. Inside, Nightwing scanned the tables and booths. Done up in various kitschy superhero themes, including an eerily accurate replica of the Batmobile's cockpit in one of the booths.

Dick made a mental note check in with Bruce about a potential security leak there.

And then there were the servers. Dressed up—some halfheartedly, others with alarming accuracy—as superheroes, Dick noticed a red-haired girl dressed as Robin, a few Spider-Men (Spider-Mans?), and one that looked like a greasy twenty-something version of Superboy.

"Over here, Dick!" Nightwing looked and nodded, smiling. Donna Troy sat in a corner booth, a red hoodie and jeans not quite managing to conceal her literally supernatural presence. He'd already noticed her as soon as he walked in, but wanted to… take it in.

Whatever "it" was about this place.

Before one of the servers could greet him, he made a bee-line for the booth where Donna sat across from her. Donna Troy—Troia—was as radiant as ever, with deep red lips, eyes that would make a man love her and fear her in equal measure, and a supernaturally flawless complexion like Wonder Woman He and Donna were often told they'd make a cute couple, even though he only ever saw her as a friend, and he could only assume she felt the same way. Perhaps it was others' attempts to press them into a relationship that had made it seem unappealing.

"Isn't this place great?" Donna said, a flashing a big, giddy smile. "The owner is thinking about taking it nation-wide. Change the name and make it into a big thing. I suggested 'Planet Krypton'."

"'Great'," Dick repeated. "That's one way to describe it."

"What, that cute red-head dressed as you making you feel a bit uncomfortable?" Donna leaned forward. "Is that a blush I see, Richard Grayson?"

"I haven't been Robin for a long time," he said. "If you want to see blushing, bring Tim here. Actually don't, it would probably kill him."

Dick folded his hands and forced the smile off his face. "But I guess we should get to work."

Donna placed a tablet computer down on the table. "Well the problem is that the Team has most of the young talent. I've not been able to find many people I trust."

"It's talent the Team needs. They're the ones in the trenches." He paused, considering for a moment that he might have seemed dismissive of Donna's goals for her new group. Since Jason had died practically mourned by nobody outside Mount Justice and Wayne Manor, Donna had written the Team off. Heroes should be honored, she thought. Not given anonymous memorials hidden away in some basement cave. Or, now, in the Watchtower garden.

"Who do you have?" Dick said after a minute. "Aside from the obvious."

"In addition to Rachel, I've found a few candidates. We could ask one of the Roy Harpers."

Dick grimaced. "Red Arrow has a child to take care of," he said. "And Arsenal is not a team player."

"Noted." Donna flipped to the next image, though with a smirk that made Dick suspect she'd already gotten one of them.

A blond woman in a red-and-orange tracksuit. "This is Jessica Chambers. Her paternal grandparents were Liberty Belle and Johnny Quick, members of the All-Star Squadron during World War II. Diana speaks highly of them."

"What about Chambers herself?" Dick said. "It says here she's a Ph.D. student at Ivy University."

"I met her personally," Donna said. "In the field. She inherited her grandmother's super strength, and her Thesis project is a reverse engineering of her father's Super Speed formula, which he took with him to his grave. So far, she's had a lot of success. She's not as fast as Impulse, but she makes up for it with her strength."

"Kid Flash," Dick said. "Not Impulse."

Donna frowned, looking down at the table. "I still think of Wally when I hear that name."

"So do I," said Nightwing. "He was the first person besides Batman and Alfred to know my secret identity. He was my best friend. But I don't want to sell Bart short either. I think Kid Flash is who he was meant to be. Impulse is almost like this character he plays so we don't see how much his future hurt him. But sometimes he drops that character and the real Kid Flash shines through."

Donna looked wistfully at Nightwing for a moment. "So," she said. "Yay or nay on Jesse Quick?"

"Definitely ask her," said Nightwing. "Next?"

Donna swiped the image again. Now the image was grainy and blurry, but there was the shape of a woman shrouded in smoke. Donna swiped through a few more.

"On February 19th," she said, "here in New York, there were reports of a disturbance of some kind. A group of aliens that Icon and Hawkwoman identified as Gordanians after the fact."

"After the fact of what?" Dick said.

"The aliens were killed by an NYPD SWAT team," said Donna. "The corpses were taken to the STAR Labs facility."

Donna pointed out the window, and Nightwing followed the line of her arm to an island on the East River. A five-story building jutting from the bedrock seemed somehow ominous.

"The aliens that Icon and Hawkwoman saw were all male Gordanians," Donna said. "Gordanians can't fly naturally but use Nth Metal wings like the Thangarians did in ancient times. But there was clearly a flying woman present at the battle judging by these shots, and she doesn't appear to have the wings."

"She looks like she's from Jersey," Dick said. "Judging by her tan."

"Or maybe Space New Jersey," said Donna. "Listen I spoke with Shayera and Icon independently. A flying woman with orange skin being pursued by Gordanians? They both agreed she was most likely a Tamaranian slave. Tamaran is a planet that's been devastated by multiple invasions, and though they're independent at the moment, many of their people are in exile, thought to be enslaved by interstellar criminals who employ Gordanians as private security."

"I take it this Tamaranian's body wasn't recovered," Nightwing said. "You think she might be alive somewhere."

"My money is that she's still at STAR Labs." Donna sat back. "Not everyone on their payroll is as benign as Emil Hamilton or the guys in Laos. The man in charge at this facility is Silas Stone, a string theory researcher who has been sued eighteen times for accidents caused by unsafe working conditions. Each time he's settled out of court."

"That's still a far cry from keeping an alien prisoner against her will," said Nightwing.

"Is it though?" Donna sighed. "He treats his own employees like garbage and they're human. If he thinks an alien will help his research, who can know what he'd do?"

Nightwing thought for a moment. If Donna was right, then there was someone in danger who needed to be rescued. But they didn't know if the alien was even there, so their first step had to be recon, gather intelligence. Even if this new team would be operating in the public eye, they couldn't go in blasting everything in sight.

"You might have to give Red Arrow a call if you want to check out this alien. I'm going to be managing Artemis' new undercover operation, which is super sensitive—"

"Couldn't—" Donna began in the middle of his sentence.

"—which I really can't ask anyone else to operate." Dick thought a moment. "Maybe I could delay her insertion long enough to lead the reckon on STAR Labs."

"Even when it's my team, you want to be the leader," said Donna, rolling her eyes. "Actually my next candidate might be a big help with the intelligence gathering part."

She moved to the next image on the tablet. A teenage boy with red hair and numerous freckles.

"Danny Chase," she said. "Spoilt brat by the sounds of it, but he's a damn good hacker. Probably better than you. He won't be on the _public_ roster."

"Sounds good to me. You're good at making people play well with others," Nightwing said. "And I can't be everywhere."

"One more." Donna swiped the screen. Another red-head, this one a young woman.

"What is it with all the red-heads lately?" Dick waited for Donna to react to that, but she didn't take the bait.

"So who is this?"

"Lilith Clay," Donna said. "Precognition. I'm not sold on her yet, to be honest."

"You don't know if she's legit?"

"No, she's the real deal," Donna said, her brow furrowing. "But precognition is all she's got. She doesn't have any other powers or training, so she's a liability in a fight."

"Then she doesn't fight," Dick said. "We could still bring her into this thing as a consultant, right? Give her our number and a codename. _Omen_ , maybe."

"A little on the nose, don't you think?" said Donna.

"Says the heroine whose codename is just her own last name in Greek," Nightwing said.

"Okay, you've got me there." Donna tapped the corner of the tablet computer rhythmically, staring off at the sky. After a moment, she stood up and stretched. "I guess we should start. Who do you want to contact?"

"You can fly, so I say you should head to Ivy Town and talk to Jessica Chambers. I can't go too far from Hoboken as long as I'm managing Art's undercover operation."

"I don't mind making the trip," said Donna, "But couldn't you just Zeta there?"

"Not if you want to keep this entirely off the radar of the League and the Team." Nightwing stood up and tapped a few buttons on wrist unit to sync with Donna's tablet and begin transferring the files he'd need: Omen, Danny Chase, and Red Arrow.

"Ugh." Donna collected her things. "All this cloak and dagger bullshit is exactly why I left the Team in the first place."

Nightwing frowned. That wasn't why she had left, or at least not entirely. He knew that Donna and Jason were close, and Jason's death had played a big part in Donna removing herself from the Team. In a way, Nightwing thought she blamed Kaldur, at least partially, for pushing Jason as hard as he did.

If only she knew how much Kaldur had blamed himself for that.

"We'll get through it," Nightwing said. "Compared to what Artemis will have to do, our 'cloak and dagger bullshit' is easy mode."

* * *

 **Hub City**

 **March 20, 17:32 CDT**

Tim Drake pulled his motorcycle to a stop in front of the address he had been assigned and felt ill at ease even with the horsepower at his disposal. This was one of the better neighborhoods of Hub City, but Tim would have felt safer in the Narrows of Gotham. The town's best days were long since behind it. Even its resident costumed hero, a reclusive faceless man known as The Question, had seemingly abandoned the Hub to rust and decay.

As if to punctuate the desolation, the internet café he was supposed to be going to was now a charred husk of a building, red brick and glass strewn about even as smoke poured out past the hap-hazard application of Crime Scene tape.

Tim tapped on his coms button. "Kal, we have a problem. This place was torched, days ago by the looks of it, though it's still smoldering. Do they not have a fire department here?" Tim looked up and down the street, but saw nobody else out, even this long before sunset. The only cars within two blocks were either stripped of their tires or still rolling on them.

 _"Learn what you can about the fire,"_ Kaldur replied. " _If the building was looted before it burned, then the security footage may be in the possession of a local criminal."_

Tim sighed. That meant he'd have to stay even longer in this town, a place that made the Bat Cave look like the Gotham Plaza Hotel by comparison.

"On it. I hope I can find a good hotel to stay at because there's no Zeta tube within 300 miles."

"I'm aware of that," said Kaldur. "And I'll route Spoiler and Batgirl to your location as soon they're finished with their tasks."

* * *

 **Dallas  
March 20** **th** **, 17:56 CDT**

Stephanie checked her watch. It was almost six PM, which meant the internet café she'd been assigned was about to change shifts. The Team agreed that would be the best time for her to get into the office.

 _Okay, Steph,_ she told herself. _Just stay cool. Nobody knows my secret identity yet. I'm just any old teenage girl slipping into a web café to goof off._

Stephanie pushed the door open and the cool air crashed over her like a wave. Even in mid-March the heat in Dallas was more than what she was used to, and the café's air-conditioning felt really nice. But she had to focus. At the counter, the clerk was tapping away at the register.

"Could I get a mocha frappe?" Steph said.

Apparently the guy didn't notice her approach because when she started speaking he practically jumped onto the table that housed the coffee machine.

"Whoa, sorry," she said. "Didn't mean to startle you."

"Y-yeah," he said. The guy was maybe 18 and a bit pudgy, with curly brown hair and rimless glasses. His nametag said Chet.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, I can get you a frappe. I'm just supposed to change shifts in a minute and my other guy isn't here yet." Chet began to make the coffee.

In her ear, the communicator buzzed to life with Aqualad's voice. _"Spoiler, what are you doing?"_

She turned her back to Chet. "I'm thirsty, okay?"

Evidently the boy had sensitive ears. "Yeah, yeah, okay, I'm going as fast as I can!"

"Uh, no not you," she said. "I was talking to—"

" _Your imaginary friend,"_ offered Beast Boy over comms.

"My imaginary…" Stephanie stopped herself. She tapped her ear and showed him her phone, hoping he didn't notice that it was actually dead. "My mother. Bluetooth."

Comms went dead for a minute—presumably while Aqualad tore Beast Boy a new one. When they came back, Aqualad only had one thing to say.

 _"Stay on task."_

"Do you want cinnamon and whipped cream?" Chet said.

"Yup." Stephanie waited for it to be finished, and paid for it, and began to make her way to the back of the café. She noticed that her receipt had a pass for an hour of computer time, couponed off, with a little heart drawn next to it. Great: Chet was hitting on her.

She sat down at one of the computers and began typing, checking the clock. It was seven-past-six by now and still no sign of Chet's replacement. Across the room, the boy slammed the phone down, tapped angrily on the counter, and then picked it up and dialed again.

This time a blaring heavy metal song began playing, tinny and muffled. It was on the other side of the wall, in the back of the café. She heard some cursing and a thud. But if that was the receiving end of the call that Chet just made… that meant the new shift had arrived and found company already here.

 _Shit._

Steph looked over at Chet, trying to ignore her pounding heart. He didn't seem to hear the muffled ring of the phone from the front of the store. Not that he'd be much help. Still, Stephanie had none of her gear, nor the anonymity her mask provided. But she'd been trained by some of the best hand-to-hand fighters in the world—and someone might be in trouble. Even if he had horrible taste in ringtones she had to help him.

"Call the police!" she shouted across the café.

Steph leapt out of her chair and ran to the door at the back, kicking it open. More muffled cursing and scrambling. Behind the door there was a narrow hall that turned left and right; since the commotion was to the right, she turned that way, slipped through another small door an into an office that seemed a lot bigger than it really needed to be.

Inside were three masked thugs: a scrawny man, a rather large man, and a woman who had a good six inches on Stephanie. Unmoving, on the floor, a long-haired rocker dude lay sprawled out, his phone on the floor beneath his hand, and both looking like they'd been stomped on. Steph couldn't tell if he was breathing.

"I told you to turn that goddamn phone off," the woman thug said.

"You told me to stomp it," the big thug said. "So I did."

"Before it rang, dumbass. I told you to turn it off before it rang!"

Steph didn't need to hear any more, she pulled her hood up and cleared her throat, catching the attention of the three crooks. The big thug had a shovel, the scrawny one had a switch blade, and the woman a pair of brass knuckles.

"You picked the wrong door, little girl," the small thug said. "This ain't the ladies room. We're Rock Paper Scissors and we're gonna—"

"I did NOT agree to that name," shot back the woman, who Steph guessed was Rock. Paper ignored the bickering and came with a powerful overhead swing of his shovel. Stephanie side-stepped the head of the shovel and caught the handle with one arm, using the other to smash it, splintering the wood. She leapt into a knee to Paper's solar plexus, then pushed off his shoulder, rolling across the desk behind him

And right into Rock's fist. The brass knuckle caught her in the side, sending a wave of pain shooting through Steph's ribs. She responded by kicking Rock in the face, staggering her.

Scissors swiped with his switchblade, and Stephanie grabbed a landline phone from the desk, flinging it at his face, even as Paper tried to smack her with his shovel again. Stephanie stood, pressing her back against the wall to brace herself on the shaky desk as she caught the shovel with a crescent kick. The already splintered wood shattered, the head of the shovel snapping off and crashing onto a printer.

What she hadn't realized as how damn hard the big lug was swinging that shovel. Her foot stung from the impact and the momentum continued until Paper clobbered Rock in the face with the broken handle of the shovel. Rock backed up, tripped over the body of the night shift guy, landing flat on her ass.

Steph grabbed the head of the shovel, slid off the desk underneath a follow up attack from Paper with the broken shaft, then stood and flung the head of the shovel at Scissors, catching him square in the chest.

He dropped the bag he was holding, which fell on its side and spilled out its contents: half a dozen video tapes. The CCTV footage she was after. Someone must have been covering their target's tracks.

Paper brought down his shovel-handle, missing her head but snapping the stick a second time over her left shoulder. Steph grunted from the pain and responded by grabbing the thug's arm and pulling forward, then stomp-kicking his leg. He fell forward, off balance, and Spoiler used his own momentum to toss him him over her shoulder and onto his comrades. For good measure she fell on him, delivering a trio of quick punches to his midsection.

She would have done more, but Chet was suddenly in the hall outside the office.

"Holy shit, did you kill them? Did you kill Walter? Holy shit."

"Walter?" Steph asked, realizing as soon as she did that Chet meant his replacement. Steph grabbed Walter's arm, pulled him closer. She checked his breathing and his pulse. Alive, at least. But his eyes were still unresponsive.

"He's out cold," she said. "Did you call the police?"

Now that the adrenaline surge of the fight was starting to wear off, Stephanie was beginning to feel the blows to her side and her shoulder, and beginning to sweat from the exertion. Already self-conscious fighting in street clothes, the last thing she wanted was Chet staring over her bloodied shoulder.

"Yeah, I called them," said Chet. "I told them some crazy blonde had just kicked the door down."

"Damn it," she said. "Walter needs a paramedic; he may have a concussion. I have to get out of here."

"What am I supposed to do with these guys?" Chet shrieked as he pointed to Rock, Paper, and Scissors.

"They're not getting up any time soon," Steph said. She grabbed the bag of tapes, scooping the ones that had fallen out back into it. "But I have to run. Superhero business."

Steph darted out the back door, hearing distant police sirens. Now she just needed to get back to the Zeta tube and everything would be fine.

" _Spoiler!"_ Aqualad's voice buzzed in her ear.

Okay, maybe not fine.

"I have the tapes," she said, hoping that success would be enough.

" _What happened? The police are on route to the scene and radio chatter mentioned a blond female suspect that may or may not possess super-human strength."_

"Well that can't be me," Steph said. "I can't even out-bench Bumblebee."

" _Spoiler."_

"I'll debrief when I get to the sub," she said. "Trying not to get caught right now."

* * *

 **Indian Ocean**

 **March 19** **th** **, 18:34 CDT**

"You succeeded in getting the tapes," Aqualad said, examining them. "There's a lot here. It will take some time to go through. None of them have dates on the labels."

"Right. I didn't know which one was relevant," Steph said.

Kaldur sat back down. The debriefing room wasn't nearly as cozy as the old accommodations at Mount Justice, and the Watchtower had proven limited when the Team and League had been working out of it simultaneously. Miss Martian had insisted on trying to recreate the Mount Justice atmosphere as closely as possible with the new base.

"So what happened during the retrieval? This was supposed to be a stealth operation, yet reports are saying that police and ambulances were both on the scene."

"Look," she said. "Someone beat us there: three thugs who called themselves Rock, Paper, and Scissors, and they were trying to steal the tapes too. Whoever threatened to blow up my dad's cell must be trying to cover his tracks."

Aqualad didn't respond, which usually meant he was withholding information so as not to color Spoiler's account. She kind of hated it when he did that.

"So Chet—the guy at the counter—said the guy taking the next shift hadn't arrived yet. So I got a coffee and was waiting. Then he called the other guy, Walter, and I heard Walter's phone ring in the back, and the thugs swearing about it."

"They were already in the building when you arrived," said Aqualad.

"Right. I didn't have a key to the back and didn't have time to explain anything, so I just kicked the door open and got to the office. The thugs attacked me—"

"Which explains your injuries."

"They got in a few hits, yeah," Stephanie said. "I'm not as good as Artemis or Batgirl."

"You're fourteen, Stephanie. It's remarkable that you took on three adult opponents by yourself."

"Regardless," she said. "I messed up."

He shook his head. "Given that you had no gear and no backup, you did as well as could be expected."

Aqualad sighed. He reached for the holoprojector on the table, turning it on. Three photos appeared above the table—their builds familiar; but now they were unmasked. They appeared to in their late-twenties to mid-thirties, and had amber skin and dark hair.

"They're all Latino," Steph observed. "I didn't notice accents."

"They were born and raised in the United States," Aqualad said. "The three of them have arrest records going back years—all of them from their home city, El Paso."

"Isn't Blue Beetle from there?" said Steph. "You asked him about them?"

"I will when he returns to duty. His school is not on Spring Break like Gotham Academy." Aqualad manipulated the controls of the holoprojector.

"But something more to the point here. All of them have been linked with a figure known as La Dama, a criminal mastermind that many think is simply an urban legend."

"You think she's not?" said Steph.

"Beetle has encountered her before," said Kaldur. "But her involvement in this just makes things more confusing, not less."

"How so?" Steph felt her brow furrowing and wished it would quit that.

Aqualad turned off the holoprojector.

"Our profile of the bomb-threat perp is a world traveler who is good with computers. If he were trying to cover his own tracks he would just hire local talent to steal the tapes—or more probably destroy them. That means this wasn't a failed attempt to cover his tracks, but that La Dama is also trying to discover his identity. It's imperative we do so before she does."

* * *

 **Paris, France**

 **March 21, 00:39 UTC**

Batgirl clinged to the side of a Parisian bistro, her grapnel line and clawed gauntlets holding her in place. She hoped she didn't damage the building's face too badly, apparently Napoleon had eaten at that very café before. It was closed at the moment: this wasn't a part of Paris that stayed busy all hours of the night. Across the narrow street, beyond a tiny electric car, was the squat red brick internet café that might have the footage she needed. Before radio silence she'd got the impression that Spoiler's mission had run into a bit of trouble. As Batgirl began to aim her secondary grapnel so that she could zipline down to the web café, something caught her attention.

Granted, that something seemed to be fishing for it: a man clad in a bright white bodysuit, utility belt clamed about his waist and a gray sash across his chest that seemed to serve no function whatsoever. He sneaked around behind the café, where Babs could just make out the knob of a door, pulled down goggles from the crown of his head, and got to work with lock picks.

"And here I thought Crazy Quilt's costume was a bit 'here I am come arrest me' sign." Babs aimed her grapnel at a tree that crested over the fence behind the café, so that she would have a straight shot down onto the white-garbed thief. She launched the hook and it claimed into the tree with a sharp snap. The thief looked up at it, then did a double take as he noticed the line, turning to follow it up to Batgirl's perch.

She had already left it, now hurtling down towards the thief at a sizeable fraction of terminal velocity.

" _Zut alors!_ " he said. Then Batgirl kicked him in the chest, sending him tumbling back into the brick fence with a grunt. He spat a few curses and then got up, drawing a fencing sword. _"Le Cerveau dit qu'il n'y aurait pas de héros interférents."_

"The Brain is smart," said Batgirl. "But he doesn't know everything."

" _Vous comprenez Français?_ _"_ he said. "Zhen I will speak to you in your language, Batgirl, zhat zhere may be no misunderstanding. I am the Great Jewel Thief LeBlanc, and you have come between me and my prize."

Batgirl cocked her head at him. "So you're a jewel thief who wears white… and you call yourself **The White**. Is this a racial thing? I know a lot of French people have problems with the Muslim immigrant population—"

" _Non!"_ barked Le Blanc, aghast. "I'm not like zhat, I'm not zhe _bee-goat_. It is not a ' _Ray-Shall Thing'_ as you put it. LeBlanc is my name. Andre LeBlanc, Jewel Thief extraordinaire."

"So the name came first," she said. "Just clarifying: I'm pretty sure there aren't any jewels here for you to steal, which means you and I are probably here for the same thing. Ergo, I'm gonna kick your ass now."

LeBlanc thrusted his sword at her. " _En garde!_ "

* * *

 **Paris, France**

 **March 20** **th** **, 00:45 UTC**

Batgirl stood on the roof of the internet café, waiting to make sure that LeBlanc wasn't about to be rescued by some unknown accomplice before the police arrived. Also she kind of felt sorry for how bad she'd thrashed him. What kind of idiot brings a fencing sword to a jewel heist anyway?

She tapped her comlink button.

"Aqualad," Babs said, ending her radio silence. "I found this shop's CCTV system. It's an old harddrive with no USB or Wifi. I'll have to hardwire it to a computer back at the base."

"A silent alarm was triggered," he said. "Why are you still there?"

"Making sure the guy who triggered it makes it into police custody," she said. The flash of sirens on the far end of the road caught her eye, and she slipped down and lay prone so the cops wouldn't notice her.

"Someone was there too?" said Aqualad.

"Yeah. A jewel thief called Andre Leblanc. I've looked him up. He's got a pretty impressive resume. Lousy swordsmanship though."

"Swordsmanship?" said Beast Boy. Batgirl ignored him.

"And get this," Batgirl said. "He was hired to retrieve this by The Brain. Do you think the Light is involved in the threats? I mean that's not usually their style."

"I think the Light is trying to figure out who sent the threat," Aqualad said. "Spoiler encountered hired goons that work for El Paso's La Dama—"

"Does the supervillain community know something we don't?" said Batgirl. "The threat didn't even accomplish anything besides wasting John Stewart's time. And ours."

"Perhaps," said Aqualad. "Or perhaps they just want to know who has access to enough Kryptonite that they can casually mail a sliver of it to Belle Reve."

* * *

 **Hoboken**

 **March 26, 15:48 EDT**

Sarah flung Artemis into the ropes, whispering something into her ear that she didn't quite catch. She'd called one of the moves they'd practiced earlier, but unable to anticipate what the young woman was doing, Artemis could only react, catching Sarah's arm as she swung and hurling Sarah over her shoulder in a judo toss. If it were a thug or supervillain, she would have followed it up with a painful strike to the back as Sarah landed. Instead she just let Sarah bounce off the canvas and roll to a stop.

"What the hell was that, Tegan?" Sarah snapped, pushing herself up and using the rope to steady herself. The arm Artemis had flung her by must have been sore, as Sarah kept rubbing it with the opposite one.

"I didn't hear you," said Artemis. "I just improvised."

"I said 'block three strikes'," Sarah said. "Not tear my arm out of its socket."

"No," Derek said. "It sounded more to me like you said 'bloated strike'."

"I heard it 'bladder Skype'," said another student, Julie.

"You shouldn't have heard it at all," Wayne said. "Sarah, talking fast and slurring your words doesn't make it harder for the ring mics to pick you up, it just makes it harder for your opponent to know what you're thinking. And that leads to screw ups and people getting hurt."

The instructor climbed into the arena with Artemis and Sarah. "Of course that also doesn't mean Tegan was right to toss you like that."

Artemis bit her lip. Seven years on the Team—not to mention Crusher's brutal training through her childhood—had etched reflexes, habits, reactions as normal as breathing. Someone takes a swing at you, you respond in kind. Redirect their momentum, make their power work for you. Over the past week she'd watched too many wrestling matches on DVD where strikes were simply traded, sometimes slapping just to make noise and prove that physical contact was happening. And she got it: it was painful getting slapped on the chest, but not really harmful. It just stung—assuming of course your opponent's hands weren't radioactive.

But just trading blows—or even just blocking blows—was a good way to lose a fight, especially against a bigger opponent. Sarah had a good five inches and twenty pounds of muscle on Artemis, and fighting her programming was difficult.

"When you perform a throw," Wayne said. "Make sure your opponent is ready. Plant your feet. Grandstand to the crowd a little, yeah? The point of a throw in this business is to make noise when your opponent hits the mat, not dislocate their shoulder. You don't so much chuck them—"

Wayne took Artemis by the wrist, squatting into a position where he had leverage. Artemis followed his lead, and got ready, playing to a crowd of eight.

"—as you help them toss themselves."

Wayne stomped the mat, his foot thudding against the plywood boards beneath, and Artemis and Wayne worked together to launch her into a summersault that Artemis had to fight every instinct in her body to twist out of and land on her feet. She slammed down into the canvas, the give taking some of the sting away as she spread out her arms and slammed them down on the mat, as they'd practiced in the drills on Friday, spreading the impact and making the landing really thump.

Several of the other trainees clapped as she landed, and Artemis curled up her legs and jumped to her feet. She wiped a bead of sweat off her forehead as it passed her eyebrow and made a mad dash for her eye.

"That was good," Wayne said. "Real good. Now work on performing it on your opponent without injuring them."

* * *

Artemis washed her face and arms and quickly changed into a loose-fitting clean shirt and a pair of khakis that Kate had bought her, —it didn't quite eliminate the tinge of sweatiness she'd worked up tonight, but it was good enough until she got 'home' to shower. Derek let slip that the other four women were heading out to some new place in Brooklyn to eat and was confused that she wasn't going with them.

"They didn't mention it to me," she said, pretending to be offended.

Artemis wasn't really surprised though. All of them had been giving her the cold shoulder since she had nearly dislocated Sarah's. At least she didn't have to fool Wayne about her real intentions. The others were starting to think she was some kind of shoot-fighter, which a cursory web search on her phone led Artemis to believe meant a pro wrestler who started real fights with the other talent.

What did surprise her was Wayne's voice in the hall behind her as she was about to step out the door of the gym.

"Tegan," he said. "Listen. I didn't mean to humiliate you in front of the others."

"You didn't," she said.

"Let me finish." Wayne sat down on a bench by the water cooler. "I didn't mean to embarrass you, but your incident with Sarah today isn't the only complaint I've had about you lashing out."

"I'm not lashing out, Mr. Williams." Artemis had to shove her actual training to the back of her mind and remember what Tegan Lee's excuse was. "But my training wasn't for show fighting, it was for riots, real self-defense. I find it difficult to let myself be hit or thrown."

"Then don't," Wayne said. "Every wrestler has to develop his or her own style and persona. If you can't get over those reflexes, then use them to your advantage. Make your gimmick someone who is untouchable, who blocks hits, dances around her opponents, but is slow to strike back, who fears her own power. Your look says heel, but if you work at it, you can be a face."

Wait, she looked like a bad guy to him?

"I'll work on that, then," she said.

"And, look," said Wayne. "You're not really 'one of us'. You're a cop. You put your life on the line, and if this Glorious Godz-with-a-Z promotion is really responsible for kidnapping, then I want you to bust the FUCK out of them. But if you don't figure this out now, you're never gonna pass as someone who actually wants to be a wrestler."

"I get it," Artemis said. "Thanks, Wayne."

He shrugged. "S'what the city of Bludhaven is paying me to do. Now get out of here, 'cause I need to hit the showers."

* * *

 **El Paso  
March 27, 00:21 MDT**

The living room at La Dama's mansion was dark. The criminal element, it had been said, was a superstitious and cowardly lot. La Dama had seen evidence of this herself—indeed she had become quite adept at using it to her advantage. But she also disagreed that it *had* to be true. Rather than continuing in superstition and fear, La Dama had learned all she could of the more arcane ways of the world: her speed dial had sorcerers, experts on alien biology, dealers in alien weaponry and metahuman artifacts. Superstition and cowardice were only useful traits in one's enemies.

One of her magicians, a sorceress known as Tala, greeted her at the door. Tala was a tall and perpetually barefoot woman with lavender hair and eyes that were a milky, luminous white. For once, her dress's neckline was reasonable, at least.

"Amparo, darling," Tala said. "It has been too long."

Tala took Amparo's hand and raised it to her lips, kissing the ring on Amparo's finger.

Amparo smiled diplomatically, though in truth the fawning sorceress annoyed her. Tala's loyalties lay with the most powerful person in the room, and Amparo was acutely aware that someday that might not be La Dama—especially if the Blue Beetle continued to curtail her operations. But that was a matter for another time.

"Have you brought the scrying stone?" La Dama said.

Tala nodded, waving a hand, her long, violet fingernails sparkling as a small marble on the living room coffee table expanded into a shimmering crystal ball. Amparo's gaze shifted back to Tala in time to see her dress shift to the usual low cut, revealing the black rune on her chest.

"You left it here?" La Dama said.

"Here, and hidden," Tala said. "Even from you."

"If my niece had found it—" La Dama let the threat hang in the air as Tala sat down by the coffee table. The room grew darker still, the front door to the mansion slamming shut. Candles that hadn't even been there when the lights were on suddenly set themselves ablaze, lighting the room in dim, flickering light. Tala's parlor tricks were impressive, but La Dama had seen them all before.

"But she _didn't_ find it," said Tala. "And I can hardly carry this heavy crystal ball as I travel. Prying eyes are drawn to the peep hole nearest a source of light."

Amparo sat down on the floor opposite Tala, and placed a photo on the table. Taken by an informant within Belle Reve, it showed the sliver of Kryptonite that had been sent with the bomb threat against Cluemaster.

"Save the excuses. I need to find where this came from."

"Your printer, judging by the freshness of the ink," said Tala.

"You know what I mean." Amparo pressed her lips together. "Can you find the source of the K-shard or not?"

"It would be easier if you had the sliver itself." Tala closed her eyes and began chanting in some language Amparo couldn't place. Then, in Amparo's head, Tala's voice continued out of sync with her lips. _"But perhaps I will find your meteorite yet."_

The chanting seemed to fill the living room, the scrying stone shooting arcs of electricity. La Dama watched as the photograph on the table began to vibrate, then bulge. The Kryptonite shard—or rather a hollow specter of it, a hologram formed of magic, rose from the image as though surfacing from a pool that smelled of ink; it hovered over the sparking crystal sphere, then lowered into it.

The scrying stone flashed, showing a ghostly image of a man in a thick jacket and cap, standing over a Kryptonite rock. The rock was on a shelf, tagged and labeled. Equipment in the background indicated some sort of laboratory, but the image in the crystal shimmered as it passed through the man's head. Amparo saw from his eyes now, as he took a laser cutter and shaved off a small piece of the Kryptonite, slid it into his pocket, and replaced the stone. When he turned to leave, a guard, face obscured by the motion and the distortion of the scrying stone shouted something Amparo couldn't hear, then drew a night stick.

But the man whose memory she had borrowed pulled a a gun and fired three times into the guard's chest. The guard fell to the ground and the man began running, working his way out of the lab into a sterile hall, then into the sun. He looked around, apparently getting his bearings.

It was a university campus.

"Enough!" Amparo said.

Tala's chanting ceased, the lights returning to normal, the candles vanishing with their flames. The Crystal ball in the center of the table once again shrunk to the size of a marble and fell into a small jar of identical spheres, Amparo losing track of it visually and then mentally, other things rushing in to fill the gap in her thoughts.

"Did you find what you needed?" said Tala acidly. "I might have had a clearer read had you printed with more dots per inch."

"Your help is appreciated and your pay will be more than adequate," Amparo said. "But I don't need more magic. Legwork will get me through the rest."

"As you wish," the sorceress said, a smile playing across her lips. "Don't be late with your payment, or I shall have to turn you into something unpleasant."

Tala left through the mansion door, her clothing transforming back to a less conspicuous form, though still leaving her feet bare. Amparo slammed the door behind the witch and glanced into her living room. She knew she had to look for that crystal ball; it was a security risk, not to mention a risk to her niece. If some demon spied on her through the stone and harmed her—but she couldn't remember where Tala had put it or what the stone was concealed as; the hiding spell had already wiped those events from her mind, though they'd happened only seconds earlier.

Cursing the witch's insolence, Amparo turned to her study. A guard was shot at a university laboratory somewhere. The story sounded familiar, and where the magic trail ended, the internet would pick up the scent.

* * *

 **Bludhaven**

 **March 28, 16:54 EDT**

Artemis knew the warehouse that Nightwing led her into had a bit of history with the Team: it was where Nightwing had made arrangements for those who lived at Mount Justice to stay after its destruction. Most of the salvage from that event had eventually made its way to the Watchtower during the time the Team operated from there, and later to the Aquabase when the United Nations' prying eyes had made the Watchtower too crowded and bereft of privacy for a covert ops team.

So the lack of hominess in the dingy building didn't surprise Artemis, though the large ring of candles and intricate runic symbol drawn on the floor in chalk did. Zatanna always made magic seem so easy: say the words backwards, and it happens. Even though Artemis had known, intellectually, that the _homo sapiens magi_ blood of Zee's mother and the training Zatarra had bestowed on her were the reason her power came so easy to her, it still shocked her to see that this new magic user needed such an elaborate set-up.

Speaking of the new blood, a girl of seventeen or so stood in the middle of the room, dressed inconspicuously in a black top and dark blue jeans—or it would have been inconspicuous if not for the blue cloak she wore over them and the dark violet hair that framed her very pale face.

"This must be Artemis Crock," the girl said, a weak smile playing across her thin lips. Her voice was soft and unassuming, but very direct.

"So it must," Dick said. He wasn't in his costume at the moment, or his police uniform, just simple street clothes. "Artemis, this is Rachel. She's going to be performing the ritual on us."

"Us?" Artemis said.

"The ritual requires both a target and a vessel," the girl explained, though Artemis had addressed the question to Dick. "And my name is Raven. I don't know why Richard insists I must have an alias, it's not as though I have any loved ones on this plane of existence to keep safe."

Artemis scanned Raven's face for a hint of a joke, but found none. "On this plane?"

"It's a long story," said Dick, moving to a point near the edge of the magic circle and taking a seat on the concrete floor. An intricate design with three appendages of sorts rested in the middle of the circle, and Raven took a standing position at the farthest one. "Raven can tell you about it later, if she wishes."

"She can also speak for herself," Raven said. "Take a seat, please. This will take some time."

Artemis assumed the last appendage indicated where she should sit, and moved to it. After a moment of quiet, Raven closed her eyes and, though she seemed to be sitting, actually hovered in the air, bringing her legs up to a crossed position in front of her instead lowering the rest of her body to the ground.

"What will this ritual do?" said Artemis.

"All memory of you will be blocked from the minds of those who know you exist. Raven said. "You will be a blank slate to them, someone they're being introduced to for the first time. All records of your existence will be wiped clean, and everything everyone knows about you will be sealed inside the mind of Richard Grayson."

Artemis' jaw dropped. Everyone would forget her? But that would mean…

" _Kate_ ," Artemis whispered.

"I'm sorry," said Nightwing. "She won't miss you, though, at least. She won't worry about you."

But, but _… Kate._

And M'gann, Zatanna, Conner, Raquel, Roy, Gar, Bart….

Mother. Jade.

Lian _,_ her tiny niece.

Artemis suddenly realized why Nightwing had refused to tell her anything about this: if she had known how deep undercover she'd be—

"If you wish to back out," Raven said, her voice lower and raspier, yet coming more forcefully now, "then you must do so now. Once I start the ritual, breaking it off will cast the worlds' memories of you to the winds, and then even Richard won't know you."

"Do it," Artemis said. "I didn't come this far to back out now."

Raven's eyes glowed bright white. "Then I will begin."

The sorceress began chanting in a language Artemis had never heard before. The magic circle shimmered, now less a drawing and more like a stream of ink. In seconds, it turned blood red, even as the flames on the candles turned bright white and shot up to the ceiling of the warehouse. Artemis felt the power of the spell wash over her like a warm ocean wave, and memories came unbidden to her mind, images of Artemis and her family—Crusher and Paula and Jade. Artemis' own image, when she could glimpse it, her hands and feet, the clothes she was trying to select from her closet, her own reflection in a mirror, shattered. All color and life left like a cloud of fireflies or sparks, leaving only a void.

Artemis realized that the rest of the world had gone dark, she could see nothing but her own memories playing out before her, but then she heard a sharp breath from Nightwing somewhere beyond the rightmost periphery of her vision, in the shadow, and knew that he was still with her, absorbing all that Raven's spell washed away.

* * *

 **Gotham City**

 **March 28, 16:59 EDT**

A relatively fresh headstone stood in an old Gotham cemetery, proclaiming half a truth. _Artemis Lian Crock, Beloved Daughter._ Though the woman who owned the name on the stone was beloved by her mother dearly, the implication _here lie her remains_ had always been misdirection. The stone, as if sensing its usefulness had long since passed, and only now did it notice, weathered away in seconds, the name and epitaph becoming illegible.

* * *

 **Washington, D.C.**

 **March 28, 17:21 EDT**

Ray Palmer, ten nanometers tall, slipped through the microprocessors of the computers in the rebuilt Hall of Justice. The computer was powered down for his safety—he was just making some routine checks to make sure sub-atomic tampering was not to blame for the recent overheating problems they'd been having. So far he hadn't encountered anything indicating such a problem. Off in a distance incomprehensibly long from his perspective, yet less than a centimeter away, the towering wall of the system's harddrive cast its shadow over everything, so when an arc of energy crackled along the corner of the device, he immediately took notice. It cascaded along the disk, then vanished, like some sort of surge of mystical power. The Atom could only wonder what the light signified.

* * *

 **Central City**

 **March 28, 18:14 CDT**

Mary West held a photo of her son and Artemis, gazing at the happiness in their faces with a bitter sadness. It had been the better part of two years since Wally had—vanished. She refused to even think of what had happened to him in mortal terms, in anything that would make it utterly final. Still, all these months, and no sign that he'd ever come home to her. It was only with the help of that girl that she and Rudy had gotten by.

Mary resolved to call Artemis. To check up on her. She picked up the phone and began to dial… but couldn't recall the number.

 _Whose number?_ She asked herself, and didn't have a good answer. It was as if she'd been trying to call her son, only to remember that he was gone. Mary put the phone back on the charger.

She fought off tears as she set the photograph back on the shelf, Wally and a classmate whose name had slipped her mind. Wally seemed so happy in that picture, and though he'd always been a relatively easy-going child, Mary had no idea why the joy on his face was so infectious in that shot. Or why the loss she felt suddenly seemed so much greater.

* * *

 **Gateway City**

 **March 28, 19:17 PDT**

La Dama still felt jetlag as she stepped off the hospital elevator and made her way down the hallway. She had, it turned out, been very lucky. The security guard Tala had showed her in the crystal ball, though he was shot three times, had survived his wounds. After several surgeries, he was finally in stable condition and held at a hospital near Holiday University—the same Holiday University that had, not so long ago, had come under scrutiny for claiming to have discovered a piece of Kryptonite that had been on Earth for centuries—something that the scientific community at large dismissed as impossible, given Krypton's destruction was estimated to have occurred less than fifty years ago. It had been a simple enough matter to put two and two together, though finding a flight to Gateway City at a decent hour had been somewhat difficult. With her refusal to play ball with Vandal Savage and his illuminati creeps, La Dama felt unsafe using private jets. Mass murder of humans was generally not the Light's M.O. but targeted assassinations were definitely in their wheelhouse.

Nonetheless, she was here now. She slipped into the security guard's room inauspiciously, hoping not to draw the attention of any nurses or doctors.

Lying very still in the hospital bed, save for the occasional flicker of the remote that controlled his TV, the wounded security guard lay, hooked up to instruments and IVs. Frankly, he looked like shit, but it wouldn't be diplomatic to say so out loud.

"Did he hire you to come finish the job?" the guard said.

"I'm sorry?" Amparo strode across the room and sat down in a faux-leather covered chair that wasn't nearly as comfortable as it looked. "Did who hire me?"

The security guard made a strained grunting noise that might have been a bitter laugh.

"Lady, don't play games. I mean the guy at the lab. The one that put these bullets in me."

"I'm not with him," Amparo said. "I'm actually trying to find him."

"What for?" the man said. "You have a thing for a man in uniform? Wanna give him what's coming to him and avenge my honor."

Amparo blanched on the inside, but kept her face neutral. "I'm afraid not. I'm simply an interested party investigating—"

"Bullshit," the guard said, moving more than he had before to sit up higher against the back of his bed, though it was clear the motion caused him a great deal of pain. "You're no cop and you're no private eye either. So if you don't tell me why you want to find him, you're out of goddamn luck."

"Fine," La Dama said. "I'm the leader of a criminal empire and live under constant threat from a superhero who happens to be close friends with my niece; an international conspiracy of supervillains wants me dead; and the man who stole that Kryptonite and shot you has spent the last eight months, as best as I can tell, gathering an army to take down that conspiracy of supervillains. To be frank, while it's unfortunate what he did to you, I want to help him achieve his goal."

She paused, stood, and took a step up to the side of the guard's bed.

"Now you can tell me what you know…"

Amparo drew a small syringe from her coat and placed the needle against the bag of liquid painkillers that fed the guard's IV. A green liquid bubbled within. Venom wouldn't kill the guard, at least not immediately, but getting a dose while nursing three bullet wounds would be excruciating.

"…or I can make your life quite hellish."

The man stared at her, growing even paler.

"Noah Kuttler," the man said. "Math professor at Fermin College in Hub City, where I used to work. Man has deep, deep pockets. Promised a huge pay off plus medical if I made it look good. I was just expecting him to clock me. The bastard didn't tell me he was gonna bring a gun, let alone shoot me with it. I don't care if you kill him or join him, it makes no difference to me as long as the money keeps coming."

Amparo pointed the syringe into her mouth and squirted, lemon lime soda splashing her tongue.

"It's Mellow Yellow," she said. "Threats are always more effective when I let the imagination run wild."

La Dama left the room at a quickened pace, though not fast enough to miss hearing the security guard mutter _crazy bitch_ under his breath.

That didn't matter though. She had a name now, and a location. Hub City was even further from El Paso than Gateway City, and Amparo didn't like to leave her business ventures for too long. Still, she didn't trust any of her lieutenants to contact this Professor Kuttler. Hopefully Tereza could hold down the fort while she was away… and hopefully Jaime Reyes would be too preoccupied with his super-friends to notice that she had left El Paso.

* * *

 **Bludhaven**

 **March 29, 00:01 EDT**

There was a surge of power, one last jolt of memories disintegrating around her, and suddenly Artemis felt cold. She opened her eyes. Raven still sat across from her, and Nightwing to her right, but both were now bathed in shadows. It was late at night, and a chill had settled into the air.

"You must be the girl," Raven said. "Forgive me if I can't remember your name, but after six hours my ritual was very thorough."

"Six hours?" Artemis repeated, feeling for her jacket on the floor behind her. She pulled her two IDs out of her jacket pocket. The one that said Tegan Lee was unchanged, but her real ID, her Gotham City driver's license, was blank. "No wonder my ass hurts."

She stood up, shivering a bit in the cold, and pulled her coat back on. She was acutely aware of her physical needs—bathroom, warmth, food, something to drink, sleep… not necessarily in that order. But she didn't feel any different. Her memories were, as far as she could tell, completely intact.

"This is weird," said Nightwing. He stood up, still in street clothes—though Artemis didn't know why she'd expected him to change mid ritual. "My head feels heavy."

Raven put her feet on the ground—Artemis bet _her_ butt wasn't hurting too bad, sitting six hours on a cushion of air—and moved over to help steady Nightwing.

"You now have all knowledge and memories regarding this person inside you now, Richard. You can't access these memories without the proper training, but they may spill into your mind when you're dreaming. Try not to be alarmed. It will all pass when you transfer them back to her."

"Will we need you for that?" Artemis asked.

"No," Raven placed her fingers on Dick's forehead, on the middle of his Anja chakra, and whispered something in the same language she had used when casting the ritual. "All he needs to do is speak your True Name, and he'll release your memories. That's why I had to give him your own memories of yourself as well, so that he can know how to say it, just as you would."

Artemis had a grim thought, then.

"And what if he were to—" she started to say _die,_ but tried to soften the question somewhat. "Take a blow to the head? Suffer some memory loss?"

"Or perish in battle," Raven said. "Then you'd better hope he has the presence of mind to speak your name with his last breath… or you'll be forgotten forever. According to the Book of Azar, the last time this ritual was performed, it happened to an immortal. He still wonders the world, a phantom, a stranger to everyone, save the keeper of his name. Luckily that won't happen to you, because you'll eventually die."

"Yeah…" Artemis said. "Lucky me."


End file.
